Tuesday, January 10, 2012

First In The Nation liveblog

8:33 p.m. Atlantic - Sorry for the delay in getting started. My sincere apology to my one reader (Hi Mom!). Very early returns show Romney heading toward high-30s, which would be a big win. Exit polls show a near three-way tie between Romney-Paul-Huntsman with Huntsman in the back, he needed to win indies to place second in my opinion, so it could be disappointing for him as the expectations game in the past 48-hours seemed to be that he'd place second or a very strong third.

8:40 - Nate Silver says that the early results are from areas Romney won in 2008, so he isn't likely to stay in the mid-high 30s.

9:00 - The instant all of the polls close, CNN calls it for Romney. Not a surprise. Tonight was about who places second between Paul-Huntsman, who places fourth between Gingrich-Santorum and how big Romney's margin is.

9:11 - Interesting tidbits from exit polls: Huntsman wins big among Democrats cross-voting in the primary but they make up only 4% of the electorate. Romney wins Republicans by a huge margin as well. Independents are split between the three major candidates, but Paul wins. Romney wins among tea party supporters which to me seems like kind of a big deal.

9:21 - Huntsman personally comes out to talk to CNN to say he's staying in the race even if he finishes third. Worried that the chatter was going to quickly turn to him having to drop out?